[LINK] USDAFoodSafety is using Twitter.

[Stilgherrian]

On 30/03/2009, at 4:34 PM, Tom Worthington wrote:
> What I find curious is that technologies like Twitter and SMS are
> relatively primitive, taking us back to the days of short text-only
> messages, with no fonts, images, audio or video. [snip]

I do reckon that one reason for Twitter's rapid adoption is that  
simplicity. No lengthy composition and fonts and smileys and other  
overhead. Just type a few words and hit "Send".

Bit that said, it's not JUST the message itself but also the  
environment -- the matrix switching of your messages to others; the  
overlap of people's networks allowing for serendipitous discovery of  
others; the options for sending and receiving via web, mobile web, SMS  
and 3rd-party clients; the open API allowing mash-ups and other  
applications such as Twitpic (which allows you to post a photo from  
your mobile phone and then tweet a link to it). It's the combinatoon  
of simplicity plus open API.


> Similarly, I expect that what USDA Food Safety need to get Twitter to
> work and a set of understood rules on how to use it and what for.

Yes, as with everything the human aspects are the most important.

Stil


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